Page 50 of Whiskey Shivers

“There was this movie with Denzel Washington a long time ago, where he was like this cop or something, chasing this killer, but the killer was a demon, jumping from person to person, using their bodies like puppets. He would always know it was the demon because it would sing the Rolling Stones, ‘Time Is on My Side’ with this eerie smile.” She shuddered. “I don’t know why, but it just reminded me of that. That movie wasn’t supposed to be like a horror movie in the traditional sense – more like a thriller or crime drama with a supernatural element, but it scared the absoluteshitout of me.”

“I’ll have to watch it sometime if you can remember the name of it.”

“Ithinkit wasFallen, but I can’t be sure,” she said.

“Hm, well, that’s what the internet is for.” I shrugged and shut off my truck. La Croix was fording the grass of the yard which was getting tall. His daddy usually never let it get this way.

I got out and cocked my head and asked him, “Your old man doin’ alright?”

La Croix’s expression was impassive when he said, “He’s finally on his way out. He’s in there dyin’ slow.”

I shot a look across the hood of my truck and at the dimly lit window of the living room of the old house.

“I’m sorry to hear that, man,” I said. “My condolences.”

“Don’t waste ‘em,” La Croix said, and he immediately dropped it when Cor popped her door open.

He beat me to it, going around to offer a hand to help her down. I shut the door to my side of the truck and wished that La Croix’s daddy had been half the man my daddy’d been. I felt right sorry for my club brother. I hated this for him, but I knew it’d rankle him something fierce if I made a thing out of it, so I dropped it too.

La Croix was greeting Corliss pleasantly, and I worked on gettin’ her bags out. La Croix took them with a nod of thanks from me and I went and put a gentle arm around my girl and led her to the dock.

“You ever been out on the swamp?” La Croix asked from the boat as I handed down her bags to him.

“No, never,” she confessed with a bit of a nervous laugh.

“At night, it’s somethin’ else,” I told her.

“Different kind of beauty at night,” La Croix said, holding up a hand to steady her as she held mine to step down into the boat, her hand leaving mine to take his as the shallow aluminum skiff wobbled slightly.

I appreciated that he treated her like precious cargo, as good as he would treat Alina. I couldn’t tell him how much.

“You’re in for a treat,” I told her, getting down into the boat behind her and pulling her between my knees and against my chest carefully.

La Croix moved around behind us to take a seat at the stern, looping the emergency stop around his wrist and pulling the ripcord to get the motor started; steering us carefully into the night-darkened swamp that was so alive with frog and insect song.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Corliss…

It was the sort of terrifying out here that was equal parts exhilarating and deep primordial dread.

The guys kept most of the fear away by talking, telling me different things about the swamp, training the spotlight from the boat out into the dark and pointing out the pinpricks of eye shine from the alligators just above the waterline. Talking about things like how Cypress was a professional alligator hunter when the season came around and how it was easier but more dangerous to hunt alligator at night. So dangerous, it was outlawed in Louisiana. You could only hunt them during the day.

They also talked about what else lurked in the shallow waters we traversed. About different turtles and a fish called Alligator Gar, and how the latter made damn good Gar cakes. Sort of like fish patties mixed with vegetables; formed and fried in oil. It sounded good, actually.

The talk of Gar cakes morphed into talk of food in general and of the legendary cookouts that were put on by the locals whenever a good enough occasion arose. Of course, some of those occasions were purely made up for the hell of it just as an excuse.

It was nice listening to them as the dim lights of the shoreline receded and the only thing that held back the impossible dark ahead of us was the boat’s dim spotlight.

Through it all, the pressing dark and the foreign hoots and calls emanating threateningly from that dark, I felt totally and perfectlysafe. Safe in the circle of Hex’s arms, as though he was my personal protection spell from, well, everything out there – be it nature or city life.

I perked up when we turned an invisible corner sometime later and there was a light up ahead, shining back at us from the deep swamp night.

A rectangle of light appeared as we approached what appeared to be a small house on a barge, and a woman’s delicate frame was backlit by the light within it.

La Croix let out a whistle and a whistle came in return from the barge. As we drew nearer, Alina’s smiling face greeted us.

“Hello!” she called out.

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